Looking pretty good… the collision detection is a little off though (I get stuck in the side of walls pretty often, and it seems to miss landings that I think I shoulda landed)… and you only sorta fixed the bouncing thing. I think they should have to press A after landing… right now it seems to only check that the button has been released (so you can release A, then hold A again while falling and he’ll immediately jump again).
I can explain more later, but if you want to get started on making sound, pull up the code to Super Bounce. That is probably one of the most basic implementations of it.
What you have to wrap your head around when using this is that you’re programming the frequencies, not samples. Where in a wav file, you’re outputting each sample, and have to keep updating the sample or no sound comes out… with this, you can set the frequency to 1000Hz, and never touch it again and it’ll keep playing.
For a quick start guide: SxFQL and SxFQH are the frequency registers (together they’re 11 bits of frequency), SxLRV is volume for left/right (4 bits each), SxEV0 is the envelope register, which you should keep at 0xF0 for simplicity (sort of a master volume as well when not using other features). SxINT you should set to 0x80 to start playing, 0x00 to stop. And SxRAM selects which waveform RAM you’re playing from… I’d set it to 0 (you should actually fill the waveform RAM, but it still plays sound without doing it). If you want to stop all channels, set SSTOP to 1. I’d only mess with SND_REGS[WAVE1] to begin with.
Unfortunately, no… the VB doesn’t really know any sort of “3D format”. Everything is basically a 2D bitmap as far as the VB is concerned. You can use 3D modelling software, but to get it on the VB, most likely you’d just export 2D bitmaps from the desired perspective.
The other possibility would be to write a 3D engine that would display actual 3D models, but this would be done in software, and fairly simple/slow.
Just a quick bump… we’ve got some great ideas here. I’m personally trying not to jump into this just yet, since I’m working other indirectly related stuff (new gcc, libraries, link cable, etc), and starting too many projects at the same time can be disasterous (at least for me).
If anyone wants to take charge, feel free… otherwise, stay tuned and we’ll get this going.
akumie wrote:
Why is it that when people start talking about making vb games its always some big game idea that nevers get finished?
Because most of us have a real life that gets in the way of finishing projects in a timely manner… and personally… I’m doing this for fun, so when it becomes more of a job than fun, I lose interest… and the game gets pushed to the back burner.
akumie wrote:
If VUE Snake was made within a week, Super Bounce within 12 hours and PongInvaders within 2 days then how hard is it to make a game that has 20+ mini games in it?
1 mini game/user
Not very hard, but mini-games typically aren’t very fun to play more than once for about 10 minutes. So… IMO a collection of mini-games wouldn’t be worth the time spent to make them. I mean… how often do you load Simon up to your flash cart and play?
I’m not sure I see your point. How is making a link cable a “bad idea”, because there’s few 2P games? I think one of the biggest reasons we don’t have 2P games is because hardly anyone has link cables.
Actually… I’m probably forgetting someone, but I can’t remember anyone else that even has a link cable… so without a link cable, it’s pretty hard/pointless to write/test linked games. Has anyone else written 2P games/demos/apps?
On the other hand… it may be a “bad idea” for you to buy one, since there’s hardly any 2P games, and you won’t be using the cable to write any of your own.
Just a quick update… we’ve finalized the design (Hedgetrimmer did an AMAZING job on the model), and I’ve placed the order for the connectors. The first prototypes should be ready in a few weeks. I’ll post an update and some pics when they arrive 🙂 .
VirtualJockey wrote:
I vote for sealing the link cables in a can. 😛
You know… that’s not actually a bad idea. Well… THAT is a terrible idea, but you might be onto something. There may be a commonly available container that’d work great for this. I don’t know what that would be, but I’ll keep my eyes open 😉 .
I just took a quick look… yeah, it looks like 18mm x 6mm x 6mm would be fine, though I can’t say 100% for sure until I actually get one built.
I looked around online for custom box printing… it seems like there’s quite a few places, though I don’t know about prices for most (most have RFQ). This place seems reasonable: http://www.actualprint.com/ , though their site absolutely sucks! Here’s an example: http://www.actualprint.com/flapboxes.htm , $1.65ea for 250 of them… $0.99ea for 500. I assume a place like that comes pre-cut, and just need to fold and maybe glue.
Yeah, I like the style of the headphone box, though I think that’d be a little small. The current design of the link connector is just a little bit smaller than the VB controller connector. The cable will likely be thicker, as well as longer. I’m expecting the cable will be similar to (if not actually) CAT5 cable. So, you could check the size of a ~6ft Ethernet cable, plus extra room for larger connectors, to get an idea for box size.
I was figuring on looping the cable and putting it in a square box, though there’s no reason it couldn’t be tied in a bundle and put in a rectangular box (probably more space efficient).
But yes, if you (or anyone) would like to design a box, or even just graphics for the box, that’d be really cool!
For costs, I don’t think a box should add more than a buck or two to the cost. It’s already expensive, and I really don’t want to raise the price, just for packaging. I’m willing to eat a minor cost, just for the “coolness” factor that comes with having a box. I wouldn’t have expected it to be too difficult to assemble though… and I wrong?
And I have a color laser printer… I dunno if they make “box” sheets or something, that you can print directly on, with perforated cut-outs for standard box sizes.
BTW, if you’d prefer to talk via PM about box mfg costs/etc, feel free to drop me a note.
And yeah… a FB/Link combo would be cool… and could be pre-loaded with a cool demo or something, though I’m not sure whether it really makes sense to bundle a 2P cable with just one flash cart 😉 .
Along those lines though… I have designed a USB adapter that’d fit completely inside the shell (so you’d plug the USB cable directly into the link plug), to allow debugging, PC link, etc. I’ll probably hold off on making them right now, but once these connectors are made, I may run a few of them and see how it works. If we can get GDB or something going, that’d probably be a good combination… Flash cart + PC link. That’d be a great VB dev tool.
I don’t want to spend $10 just on packaging! A simple box would be fine.
Heh, don’t worry… if packaging adds any significant cost, it won’t be done.
You should talk to Chris about maybe setting up a special “limited edition” combo pack that had a flash boy plus and a link cable… Make fancy packing for that and charge a bit extra to cover the NRE costs.
That’d be pretty cool, though I hope these will be done before Q2 2011 🙂 .
That would be cool, but it wouldn’t be able to close again once its been opened (assuming you’re speaking of blister packaging), correct? Though it would be awesome to have a cardboard box with a vacuum formed window in the front like the Pokemon Mini or Gameboy Micro packaging.
I was thinking like the blister packaging, but the resealable kind, where it’s just pops open and closed. I also thought about a tray insert for inside the box w/ a clear window, but that seems too complicated (then I’m vacuum forming, making a box, AND putting in a clear window).
I have no experience with vacuum forming (except the Vac-U-Former – like the Toymax version: http://www.samstoybox.com/toys/Vac-U-Form.html ), so this probably isn’t something I can just pick up and do perfectly on my first attempt.
Oh… I guess I never mentioned this… but the MFG did say they could do part of the run in red and the other in black. So, I think I could do both if some of you prefer red.
I don’t know the manufacturing time on these, but I’m under the impression that it’s not extremely long. Hopefully we’ll get a final model soon, then the MFG said they’d send me a connector to verify that I’m happy with it, then mfg the rest.
Also, any if artistic people would like to design a box for it, I’d certainly consider creating a box (and anyone that has made a box *ahem KR155E* 😉 feel free to chime in on problems, etc). I’ve always wanted to try vacuum forming as well… that’d be pretty cool to make a clear plastic retail package, though a box is probably easier, and probably looks cooler in a VB collection.
No news, except that we’re making really good progress on getting the model just right. The MFG seems ready to take on the project whenever we send him the file 🙂 .
VirtualChris wrote:
Do you shoot stuff in Hunter? I never bothered to look at it even though it won the competition. I’m still depressed that it took all that time and effort only to come in 5th!
How do you think I feel? I spend 12 GOOD hours on mine, and got last place 😛 . Heh, sorry… just poking fun… someone’s gotta get first place, someone’s gotta get last place. I’m just glad I’m getting a poster. I can’t wait to be the envy of the office when I hang that poster up on my office wall 😉 .
blitter wrote:
Might want to try removing the “CFLAGS=-Wno-error” from the binutils phase in the GCC 4.4.2 build script,… I think I left that in there from the Mac build– it’s necessary there for some reason.
Thanks… that seemed to fix that problem. I think I got it built, though I haven’t compiled anything with it yet. There were a couple other things I had to do as well. One difference is that it now needs libiconv installed. The other was a strange error in LDFLAGS during build, where it’d complain that LDFLAGS changed while being built, though they were actually the same, just somehow there was an extra space in the string. I ended up manually removing the space in config.cache (in gmp IIRC). There’s probably a better way to do it, but I didn’t feel like digging too much.
